I drove my Chevrolet S-10 for almost ten years before finally replacing the stereo. In 1999 it seemed perfectly acceptable to have a cassette tape player. Today it's practically an obsolete piece of car audio. I had used a cassette tape adapter for my MP3 players, but when the cassette tape player broke, I had no way to enjoy my Zune in my truck. FM modulators never worked well for me.

Finally I took the plunge and got an HD Radio/CD/CD-ROM MP3 player with a auxiliary line-in port for direct connect for my Zune. The new stereo has a removable faceplate, and while the stereo itself isn't particularly expensive, I don't want someone breaking into truck and stealing the stereo just because it's not a stock radio.

I saw sfgabe's cool "Fake-out Stolen Car Stereo" Instructable and it gave me the idea to make a fake faceplate for my truck's new stereo. This faceplate is made using the original Delco radio/cassette tape player that came with the truck, some Velcro, and a lot of epoxy glue. I left half of a cassette sticking out of the tape player for added effect.

Follow along with this Instructable to see how I made my own fake-out face plate. Every car stereo will be different, but this Instructable will give you the general idea.

Please leave your comments and feedback, and be sure to share any pictures of similar projects.

One thing i've always wanted to do was to hide a fire extinguisher with an electrovalve and a hose pointing to the driver's seat with an alarm to trigger it. So when someone breaks into the car he/se gets a bath of extinguisher poo-poo.In fact I think sometime I'll actually do it.

Years ago I owned an auto repair shop, one of our regular customers drove a small honda from New York City to our area for work on the bottom of both front windows was a sign that said, "Doors are unlocked, no radio or change in car, PLEASE do not break my windows" at that time the portable audio system of choice was a walkman...sorry for your loss... = (

Bummer,When I drove my little red convertible sports car, I never locked the doors, and never left anything inside that appeared to be valuable. The reason being, the cheap radio costs about $99 buck US, the inexpensive fabric top costs $300 US plus labor to install. So, let the thief open the unlocked door to steal the $99 radio, and not have to smash glass, or cut the cloth top to get in, so he / she can also steal the $99 radio.

I liked this article. I work in the car audio industry and I've done a few similar jobs for customers, but it usually just involved blacking out the radio... not using the original face. I like this idea a lot. One thing you could try, instead of the velcro is to use magnets behind the dash kit... they will need to be pretty strong magnets. Just hot-glue or superglue them behind the dash kit and put some magnets on the back of your stock face plate. That way when you've got the faceplate removed you're not stuck looking at that ugly hook and loom. :-)

Cassette decks? yes... CD players? No. If that were the case then we'd still be using mu metal foil in the car audio world. But I have NEVER had to wrap a CD player in mu foil. CD players operate off of optics, not magnetic heads.

This could've saved me 3 years ago. I just put in a new Sony Xplode deck and moved to the city. My first night I didn't unpack anything. When I was leaving for work the next morning, my window was broken and my Stereo, amp, speakers, movies, and games were gone. I know what you're gonna say and yes, the stuff was on the floor and covered. The flashy stereo attracted the thief. As an added bonus, they left the doors and the glove box open and killed my battery so I was late for work.

shortly after i had moved to a new apartment in the city around 98 or so, i left my jetta unlocked on accident one night, only to find out the next morning that my stereo and cd's had been stolen. the worst part about the cds was, i am a musician and some of the music was irreplacable, old band demos & self recorded stuff. 5-10 years of music gone. I still had a woofer and amp in the trunk that they didnt take or didnt realize was there, but I would have traded that for my cds back in a SECOND!!! I felt like crying when I found out they stole my music. After that I started using audiograbber to rip every CD anally.

Thieves will take anything from a car that they can get into, I once left a dead AM radio on the passenger seat of a car I briefly had (a junker, no way in heck it was going back on the road), next morning, radio gone. No loss though, cos it was a free radio, it didn't work, and I just laughed.... :P

Still, great idea if I can ever own a car again, though given my lack of use of radios or anything in vehicles, I'd probably pull the thing out and blank off the radio slot, and in this day and age a head unit with all the bells and whistles just seems a waste, just need an amp with the audio controls and a connector for a music player (not necessarily an iPooed), simple... :)

If I'm going to remove the new faceplate to put the fake faceplate on then what's the point of the fake faceplate? No one is going to steal a stereo that's missing the faceplate. Most if not all stereo face plates are coded to work only with the stereo they came with.

Because thieves know that most people will just leave the faceplate in the glovebox or under the seat. It takes a thief 30 seconds to break in and check the glove box and under the seat. It takes maybe a minute to pry the stereo out of the dash. The chances of getting caught are so slim that there's almost no risk for the thieves. Really, there's nothing to lose and everything to gain. Even if they don't steal the stereo, the damage is already done. It will cost you a couple hundred to replace the broken window. At least once a week, I see a car with a broken window, glass on the street, or a new window will the grease marker stock number on it. Once in a while I see half a stereo hanging out, minus faceplate, meaning the thief broke in, found the faceplate, and tried to get stereo out but couldn't. It's a great idea, I was thinking after my car got broken into and they damaged the stereo trying to remove it. Instead I put the stock stereo back in and got an iPod, and make sure I don't the ipod in the car or leave any evidence that there ever was an ipod in the car.

But a true audiophile wouldn't be happy with this set up. Your 1987 radio probably pushes out 10 watts RMS per channel tops. Aftermarket decks push out 18-22 watts RMS per channel. That's a big increase. Plus aftermarket decks have low-level pre-outs. This makes for much better sound quality as it reduces noise instead of using a line-out converter which converts high-level outputs to low-level. And then there's the issue of equalizers. Stock radios have at most a 3 band equalizer. Most aftermarket radios have no less than 5 bands. This gives you more control over your sound. Plus a lot of aftermarkets have high and low-pass filters. This is also known as a crossover. This allows you to restrict the frequencies going to speakers. So if you have a sub you'd want to apply a low-pass filter to the sub so that it keeps the higher frequencies from going to the sub which allows the sub to fire more efficiently. And then you'd want to apply a high-pass filter to the speakers to keep the bass from going to the speakers. Bass distorts small speakers, so by blocking the bass you can crank the volume higher without getting distortion.

This is pure genius. You would be surprised how many people will steal a head unit without a faceplate on it thinking they can just get another one for it. The thing is if their dumb enough to steal in the first place, chances are they haven't taken the time to think about the finer points of the workability of the device. I've personally known this to happen as I'm an installer and have assisted people in replacing their stolen properties. This is an excellent way to stop that from happening. Though there are a few criminals out there who will take a stock stereo, they are far fewer than those who would snag an aftermarket unit. This is nothing less than brilliant. I commend you for a sweet idea. This is something I'm going to pass on to my customers. The only thing I would do different is to use posts and rubber grommets to hold the fake in place. Less chance of foreign material getting caught in it and fouling the connection. It might be a little cleaner looking too in the final install.